Not to Disturb (2 page)

‘With all that in there alone,' says Heloise, still
contemplating the closed cupboard wherein lies the wall-safe of treasure, ‘we
could buy the Montreux Palace Hotel.'

‘Who needs the Montreux Palace?' says Hadrian.

‘Think big,' says Pablo the handyman, patting her around
the belly.

‘How it kicks!' she says.

•

‘How like,' says Lister, ‘the death wish is
to the life-urge! How urgently does an overwhelming obsession with life lead to
suicide! Really, it's best to be half-awake and half-aware. That is the happiest
stage.'

‘The Baron Klopstocks were obsessed with sex,' says
Eleanor. She is setting places at the long servants' table.

‘Sex is not to be mentioned,' Lister says. ‘To do so
would be to belittle their activities. On their sphere sex is nothing but an
overdose of life. They will die of it, or rather, to all intents and purposes,
have died. We treat of spontaneous combustion. One remove from sex, as in Henry
James, an English American who travelled.'

‘They die of violence,' says Clovis who has transferred
to the butler's desk his papers and the contract and documents he has been
studying closely for the past three-quarters of an hour. He sits with his back
to the others, looks half over his shoulders. ‘To be precise, it is of violence
that they shortly die.'

‘Clovis,' says Eleanor, ‘would you mind giving an eye to
the oven?'

‘Where's my assistant?' says Clovis.

‘Hadrian has gone down to the lodge,' says Eleanor. ‘Gone
to borrow a couple of eggs. Him in the attic hasn't had his supper yet.'

‘No eggs in the house?' says Clovis.

‘There was too much else to arrange today,' says Eleanor
as she places five tiny silver bowls of salt at regular intervals along the
table, carefully measuring the distance with her eye. ‘No marketing done.'

‘Things have gone to rack and ruin,' says Lister, ‘now
that the crisis has arrived. This house hitherto was run like the solar
system,'

‘Cook your own damn dinner,' says Clovis, bending closely
over his documents.

‘Don't you want any?' says Heloise. ‘I'll eat your share
if you like, Clovis. I'm eating for two.'

Clovis bangs down his fist, drops his pen, goes across to
the large white complicated cooking stove, studies the regulator, turns the
dial, opens the stove door, and while looking inside, with the other hand snaps
his finger. Heloise runs with a cloth and a spoon and places them in Clovis's
hand. Protecting his hand with the cloth Clovis partly pulls out a casserole
dish. He hooks up the lid with the handle of the spoon, peers in, sniffs,
replaces the lid, shoves the dish back and closes the oven door. Again, he turns
the dial of the regulator. Then with the spoon-handle, he lifts the lids from
the two pots which are simmering on top of the stove. He glances inside each and
replaces the lids.

‘Fifteen minutes more for the casserole. In seven minutes
you move the pots aside. We sit down at half-past seven if we're lucky and they
don't decide to dine before they die.'

‘No they won't eat,' says Lister. ‘We can have our dinner
in peace while they get on with the job.'

From somewhere far away at the top of the house comes a
howl and a clatter.

‘I'll have a vodka and tonic,' says Clovis, as he passes
through the big kitchen and returns to his papers at the butler's desk.

‘Very good,' says Lister, looking round. ‘Any more
orders?'

‘Nothing for me. I had my carrot juice. I couldn't
stomach a sherry, not tonight,' says Eleanor.

‘Nerves,' says Lister, and has started to leave the
kitchen when the house-telephone rings. He returns to answer it.

‘Lister here,' he says, and listens briefly while
something in the telephone crackles into the room. ‘Very good,' he then says
into the telephone and hangs up. ‘The Baron,' says he, ‘has arrived.'

•

The Baron's great car moves away from the
porter's lodge while the porter closes the gates behind it. It slightly swerves
to avoid Hadrian who is walking up the drive.

The porter, returning to the lodge, finds his wife
hanging up the house-telephone in the cold hall. ‘Lister sounds like himself,'
she tells her husband.

‘What the hell do you expect him to sound like?' says the
porter. ‘How should he sound?'

‘He was no different from usual,' she says. ‘Oh, I feel
terrible.'

‘Nothing's going to happen, dear,' he says, suddenly
hugging her. ‘Nothing at all.'

‘I can feel it in the air, like electricity,' she says.
He takes her arm, urging her into the warm sitting-room. She is young and small.
She looks as if she were steady of mind but she says, ‘I think I am going
mad.'

‘Clara!' says the porter. ‘Clara!'

She says, ‘Last night I had a terrible dream.'

Cecil Klopstock, the Baron, has arrived at his door, thin
and wavering. The door is open and Lister stands by it.

‘The Baroness?' says the Baron, passively departing from
his coat which slides over Lister's arm.

‘No, sir, she hasn't arrived. Mr Passerat is
waiting.'

‘When did he come?'

‘About half-past six, sir.'

‘Anyone with him?'

‘Two women in the car. They're waiting outside.'

‘Let them wait,' says the Baron and goes towards the
library, across the black and white paving of the hall. He hesitates,
half-turns, then says, ‘I'll wash in here,' evidently referring to a wash-room
adjoining the library.

•

‘I thought it best,' Lister says as he enters
the servants' sitting-room, ‘to tell him about those two women waiting outside,
perceiving as I did from his manner that he had already noticed them. — “Anyone
with Mr Passerat?” he said with his eye to me. “Yes, sir,” I said, “two ladies.
They are waiting in the car.” Why he asked me that redundant question I'll never
know.'

‘He was testing you out,' says Hadrian who is whisking
two eggs in a bowl.

‘Yes, that's what I think, too,' says Lister. ‘I feel
wounded. I opened the door of the library. Passerat got up. The Baron said “Good
evening, Victor” and Passerat said “Good evening.” Whereupon, being unwanted, I
respectfully withdrew.
Sic transit gloria mundi
.'

‘They will be sitting down having a drink,' says Pablo
who has cleaned himself up and is now regarding his hair from a distance in the
oval looking-glass. This way and that he turns his head, with its hair
shiny-black.

‘Didn't he ask for more ice?' says Eleanor. ‘They never
have enough ice.'

‘They have plenty of ice in the drinks cupboard. I filled
the ice-box, myself, and put more on refrigeration this afternoon when you were
all busy with your telephoning and personal arrangements,' Lister says. ‘They
have ice. All they need now is the Baroness.'

‘Oh, she'll come, don't worry,' says Clovis, stacking his
papers neatly.

‘I wish she'd hurry,' says Heloise, as she slumps in a
puffy cretonned armchair. ‘I want to eat my dinner in peace.'

Hadrian has prepared a tray on which he has placed a dish
of scrambled eggs, a plate of thin toasted buttered bread, a large cup and
saucer and a silver thermos-container of some beverage. Eleanor, with vague
movements, leaves her table-setting to place on the tray a knife, a fork and a
spoon; then she covers the toast and the eggs with silver plate-covers.

‘What are you doing?' says Hadrian, grabbing the knife
and fork off the tray. ‘What's come over you?'

‘Oh, I forgot,' says Eleanor. ‘I've been in a state all
day.' She replaces the knife and fork with one large spoon.

Lister goes to the house-telephone, lifts the receiver,
and presses a button. Presently the instrument wheezes. ‘Supper on its way up to
him in the attic,' says Lister. ‘Yours will follow later.'

The instrument wheezes again.

‘We'll keep you informed,' says Lister. ‘All you have to
do is stay there till we tell you not to.' He hangs up. ‘Sister Barton is
worried,' he says. ‘Him in the attic is full of style this evening and likely to
worsen as the night draws on. Another case of intuition.'

Hadrian takes the tray in his hands and as he leaves the
room he asks, ‘Shall I tell Sister Barton to call the doctor?'

‘Leave it to Sister Barton,' says Lister, gloomily, with
his eyes on other thoughts. ‘Leave it to her.'

Heloise says, ‘I can manage him in the attic myself, if
it comes to that. I've always been good to him in the attic.'

‘You better get some sleep after you've had your supper,
my girl,' says Clovis. ‘You've got a big night ahead. The reporters will be here
in the morning if not before.'

‘It might not take place till six-ish in the morning,'
says Heloise. ‘Once they start arguing it could drag on all night. I'm
intuitive, as Mr Lister says, and —'

‘Only as regards your condition,' says Lister. ‘Normally,
you are not a bit intuitive. You're thick, normally. It's merely that in your
condition the Id tends to predominate over the Ego.'

‘I have to be humoured,' says Heloise, shutting her eyes.
‘Why can't I have some grapes?'

‘Give her some grapes,' says Pablo.

‘Not before dinner,' says Clovis.

‘Clara!' says Theo the porter. ‘Clara!'

‘It's only that I'm burning with desire to ask them
what's going on up at the house tonight,' she says.

‘Come back here. Come right back, darling,' he says,
drawing her into the sitting-room where the fire glows and flares behind the
fender. ‘Desire,' he says.

‘Theo!' she says.

‘You and your nightmares,' Theo says. He shuts the door
of the sitting-room and sits beside her on the sofa, absentmindedly plucking her
thigh while he stares at the dancing fire. ‘You and your dreams.'

Clara says, ‘There's nothing in it for us. We were better
off at the Ritz in Madrid.'

‘Now, now. We're doing better here. We're doing much
better here. Lister is very generous. Lister is very, very generous.' Theo picks
up the poker and turns a coal on the fire, making it flare, while Clara swings
her legs up on to the sofa. ‘Theo,' she says, ‘did I tell you Hadrian came down
here to borrow a couple of eggs?'

‘And what else, Clara,' says Theo. ‘What else?'

‘Nothing,' she says. ‘Just the eggs.'

‘I can't turn my back but he's down here,' says Theo.
‘I'll report him to the Baron tomorrow morning.' He goes to draw the
window-curtains. ‘And Clovis,' he says, ‘for not keeping an eye on him.' Theo
returns to the sofa.

Clara screams ‘No, no, I've changed my mind,' and pushes
him away. She ties up her cord-trimmed dressing-gown.

‘Not so much of it, Clara,' says Theo. ‘All this yes-no.
I could have the Baroness if I want. Any minute of the hour. Any hour of the
day.'

‘Oh, it's you that makes me dream these terrible things,
Theo,' she says. ‘When you talk like that, on and on about the Baroness, with
her grey hair. You should be ashamed.'

‘She's got grey hair all places,' Theo says, ‘from all
accounts.'

‘If I was a man,' says Clara, ‘I'd be sick at the
thought.'

‘Well, from all accounts, I'd sooner sleep with her than
a dead policeman,' says Theo.

‘Hark, there's a car on the road. It must be her,' says
Clara. But Theo is not harking. She plucks at his elastic braces and says, ‘A
disgrace that they didn't have an egg in the house for the idiot-boy's supper.
Something must be happening up there. I've felt it all week, haven't you,
Theo?'

Theo has no words, his breath being concentrated by now
on Clara alone. She says, ‘And there's the car drawing up. Theo — it's stopped
at the gate. Theo, you'd better go.'

He draws back from his wife for the split second which it
takes him to say, ‘Shut up.'

‘I can hear the honking at the gate,' she says in a loud
voice — ‘Don't you hear her sounding the horn? All week in my dreams I've heard
the honking at the gate.' Theo grunts.

The car honks twice and Theo now puts on his coat and
pulls himself together with the dignity of a man who does one thing at a time in
due order. He goes to the hall, takes the keys from the table drawer and walks
forth into the damp air to open the gate beyond which a modest cream coupé is
honking still.

It pulls up at the porter's lodge after it has been
admitted. The square-faced woman at the wheel is the only occupant. She lets
down the window and says, cheerfully, ‘How are you, Theo?'

‘Very well, thanks, Madam. Sorry to keep you waiting,
Madam. There was a question of eggs for the poor gentleman in the attic, his
supper.'

She smiles charmingly from under her great fur hat.

‘Everything goes wrong when I'm away, doesn't it? And how
is Clara, is she enjoying this little house?'

‘Oh yes, Madam, we're very happy in this job,' says Theo.
‘We're settling in nicely.'

‘You'll get used to our ways, Theo.'

‘Well, Madam, we've had plenty of experience behind us,
Clara and me. So we've shaken down here nicely.' He shivers, standing in the
cold night, bareheaded in his porter's uniform.

‘Your
rapport
with the servants — is that all
right?' gently inquires the Baroness.

Theo hesitates, then opens his mouth to speak. But the
Baroness puts in, ‘Your relationship with them? You get on all right with
them?'